


can't take the kid from the fight

by sazzafraz



Series: Nous protéger d'en haut [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Disturbing Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-29 23:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sazzafraz/pseuds/sazzafraz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He goes walking after they turn Boyd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. runaway american dream

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an Isaac centric piece. Again, mostly completed but I'm going to be away for awhile so I'm posting this now. It will eventually focus on what the hell happened to Jackson.
> 
> [here is the mix](http://8tracks.com/sazzafraz/this-town-made-of-bones), a general one for hollowsverse!Beacon Hills.
> 
> Enjoy responsibly.

\--

act I - runaway american dream

\--

There is an incident with a bathtub when he is much younger.

His mother sits down in it too long, drags only half of herself and her dark dress in, and waits with a pretty glass of wine in one hand and a book of poetry in the other. She reads long passages from it dipping into her old accent when she gets excited by the prose. Isaac is four, his cheeks are full, and he sometimes forgets to use his words. It’s not that he doesn’t have them but words are for his mother’s tongue and the water. Words are not always meant for the mouths that say them.

‘The little box gets it’s first teeth,’ his mother says, Popa hot and reverent on her tongue. He listens very hard for the moment her voice changes from reciting the words to pushing life into them. His mother jokes about being a Selkie, being a lost mythical creature, and it is easy to believe when she talks. His mother is a myth. His mother flows onto The Craftsmen of the Little Box and she sighs around the ending line. Holds her wine closer to her lips and pauses to drink.

His mother asks him if he wishes to be in the water too. He’s shy. He sits further back against the far wall and watches as she swallows down all the red and reads again.

Time passes until the mid-afternoon light she was speaking by turns into twilight turns into a candle. Isaac’s hands grow cold against the floor and still his mother reads. She’s flowed into her mother tongue, her mother tales, the hard lessons of the Táin Bó Flidhais.

Eventually she sinks into the water and holds out her hand. Isaac toddles forward on tired legs and places one small hand in hers. His mother smiles and ducks under. She rises again only up to her eyes. Runs her hand over his hair.

‘Fear the fire, baby child, fear the fire.’ His mother’s words are in his ear even if her mouth is still in the water. He nods once, suddenly so very tired. His mother puts him to sleep. Lays down and curls around him like she has every night since he can remember. Like she can blanket him from every bad thing if she just curls tight enough around him.

\--

He goes walking after Derek turns Boyd. The injuries he’s got will heal although that’s still too new to be any real comfort. He thinks he’ll miss the fading, mostly. He’s getting a morbid enough sense of humor now to appreciate the mottling. There’s rain suddenly crashing down over his shoulders and pulling on his hair. His shoulders droop for a second under the weight. It’s not that it’s heavy. It’s that he usually has to remember to lift himself. Has to work for every step he takes. His shoulders fall back easily enough. An aggressive stance for something that might not belong to violence by nature but will by adaption. The wolf he imagines is inside him, the one that lends him teeth, stretches comfortably. The rain is just water.

The town is different when you’ve got the extra senses. He doubts Derek appreciates it, Erica has been a whirlwind of _go, go, go_ since she got the bite, Boyd might stop and look with his new eyes but even then he doesn’t have the natural hyper awareness that trauma brings. Isaac relishes it. The tiny tremors on leaves, the sweet smell of sardine packed teenagers, the caustic press of the boys locker room. It’s all new and all his.  

He hits a fish and chips shop on the way back, the one near the old dentists, the chips are awful but he doesn’t care overly much. The only second hand bookstore in Beacon Hills is on the same street. He picks up some mythology for himself and the heavy historical text Erica wanted. Both of them read a lot. Him because it’s an easy route of escape and her because she thinks of it as almost the same as having friends. There’s a range of people just old enough to be college students loitering in front of the store. From their conversation he gathers that they’re from the community college, doing a wildlife survey. The group walks off leaving one of them behind; a tall, slim figure with a nondescriptly androgynous face and a thin purple umbrella. Not a single one of the group turns around as they round the street corner.

The person with the bright purple umbrella and the androgynous features stops next to him, heels clacking together. ‘I would avoid taking the forest home.’ Is all he -she?- says.

Isaac doesn’t reply. The figure frowns at him for a moment past politeness before huffing and leaving without a word. Isaac eats a few more chips.

He does take the woods because there’s a sharp turn of them between him and his bike in the school parking lot. The woods are as large and never ending as ever, the trees bare, the ground deeply coloured and littered with natural debris. The air has a stillness to it. Like a cat stalking a fly, waiting for the moment to leap on you. Half the time Isaac just thinks that’s just his own jumped up fear response and other times-

There was a study done of Beacon Hills wildlife done years ago of strange wildlife phenomena when there were still literal wolves here. A strange exodus of animal life that happened some 100 years ago. No wildlife indicators, no hunting, just animals leaving with seemingly no reason. It was debunked about 20 years later; mass expansion just drove them away. Isaac’s never been sold on anyone ‘just leaving’ there is always something to leave.

_Move away child_

Isaac turns to his left and then his right. The woods are growing thicker in front of him, forming a path that he can’t turn off of. He keeps walking forward because it feels wrong to turn back. His feet slide into loose dirt and the high smell of methane. The woods lead him into a grove surrounded by trees that reach into the sky. The ground shivers and pushes up bulges, the bulges crack and reveal something that looks like blood and bone. Isaac keeps walking. Delicate trails of water travel down the trees and through the broken and bloodied bodies on the ground. Isaac walks through the mess barely bothered by the carnage. He comes to a lump raised off the ground. The water runs up legs formed of grass and weeds.

_Isaac_

No

_Baby, run, run._

The legs lead to a stomach thick with old scars in the form of worms. The torso flows into a womans face in peaceful repose counterpoint to her wounded hands.

‘What the _fuck?_ ’ Isaac turns around and finds himself gripped in place by the mist, surrounded by women draped over the rocks. He turns again and finds himself alone again in the woods.    

‘I told you not to take the forest.’ A voice says in his ear.

\--

His mother used to take him to the ocean. She believed that every six months she had to return to the sea. They went every four months until he was nine. His father was always jealous of any time she spent with anyone else and she always refused to take him. They would stand under the moon and pour water over each other for hours and hours, until Isaac was chilled from cold water and he couldn’t feel his feet.  

‘We must always be clean, Isaac baby.’ She said as she poured a bucket of ocean water over his head, ‘your father and your brother don’t need to do it.’

‘Why not?’ He asks, as she rubs sand over his bare legs, there’s glass in the sand that cuts his legs, the sea carries away the pain.

She gives him a steady look. ‘Words are not always meant for the mouths that say them.’ She pours water over her own head. She must look odd in her old green dress. ‘Our words are unspeakable and we would belong by this ocean if we were allowed. We aren’t, and I’ll tell you why some day. For now remember this.’

She dumps more water over his head. Isaac bites his lip. ‘Why would we leave them?’

‘Sometimes leaving is the only thing to be done.’ She whispers. ‘Would you like some ice cream?’

Isaac nods, lets her carry him to the shore.   

\--

Another day another collection of hours wasted in Beacon Hills High.

Erica and Boyd have fucked off, to, well, fuck. Isaac is diligently pretending he still gives a damn about lacrosse. The stands are full of cheering girlfriends and wannabe girlfriends, they come off the stand at the end of practice handing drinks and food to the players. He cuts through the change room’s, into the hallway, bee lining for the front doors. He’s just passing the first set of stairs when Lydia Martin drifts past him on her immaculate shoes and pauses at the foot of them. She hesitates on every other step walking like she’s moving through mud. There’s something in that that calls to the predator in him. The beginning’s of a bone deep weakness. He shrugs it off, what the hell does he know about the intricacies of the popular echelon?

Erica and Boyd pick him up in Erica’s brothers car. Boyd is the only one of them with a license.

‘Hey you,’ Erica says, menthol cigarette hanging from her lips, ‘smoking isn’t for me.’

‘It’s the burn in your nostrils.’ Isaac says as he slides into the seat behind them. Boyd gives him a look when he doesn’t immediately put on his seat belt. ‘Car crash _probably_ won’t kill us.’

‘Sure, that’s a great reason to be pulled over by the sheriffs department.’ Boyd sighs, ‘please? You’re basically a delinquent and Erica hasn’t put a shirt on all week.’

‘Are you shaming me?’ Erica narrows her eyes, ‘don’t think I’ll stand for that, Vernon. Two can play the shame game.’

Isaac laughs. ‘Vernon?’

‘I can get out of this car.’ Boyd says long sufferingly, ‘I can leave and you two will be stuck here in this car since neither of you can drive.’

‘I can drive.’ Isaac says indignantly. ‘I was just too poor to have a car.’

‘Well I can’t drive on account of epilepsy.’ Erica smiles, ‘not that, that can stop me now.’

‘See what you’ve done?’ Boyd says to Isaac, ‘if you’d just put your seatbelt on she wouldn’t be planning world domination.’

Isaac rolls his eyes and puts his seatbelt on.  

Boyd drives them around for hours, cruising through town like teenagers in a 60’s movie. Boyd’s  a fan of classic rock which Isaac agrees with. Erica really loves latin pop, and after an hour on her favourite radio station, they do too. Erica spots them for dinner, her parents are wealthy enough and thrilled that their daughter is going out with friends that they handed her $100 and left her to it.

‘It’s not that I don’t love them,’ Erica says as she works her way through her third serve of onion rings, ‘I just learnt pretty early on to not trust them.’

‘Why?’ Isaac leans forward to steal the half burger Boyd put down. Boyd growls at him.

Erica taps the car window thoughtfully.‘Because they couldn’t help me, they couldn’t make it stop. I was pretty young when the seizures started. I still believed my parents could fix anything. I can’t forgive them for not.’

‘You’ll have time to, though.’ Isaac says, ‘you can fix it if you want to.’

Erica smiles tightly, nods. ‘I can, yeah. Maybe in a couple of years, after we’re all out of this town.’

‘I, uh,’ Boyd puts down his food and leans back in his seat, rustling the discarded papers on the floor, ‘I lost my sister. She went missing. I’m pretty sure it’s my fault.’

Erica and Isaac stare at him.

Boyd shrugs, a ‘nevermind’ type gesture, ‘I just thought you should know something about me.’

‘We know tons about you.’ Erica says earnestly.

‘Yeah,’ Isaac nods. ‘You don’t think Springsteen was all that, which means you’re deaf and possible un-American.’

‘You’re left handed.’ Erica adds. ‘You think Mandy Limpkin’s writing could summon the devil.’

‘You love really bitter drinks.’

‘You hate chemistry and _not_ because Harris stares at your cleavage.’

‘This morning Mr Kingsley lied about when the pop quiz was and you nearly killed him.’

‘You like us,’ Erica says decisively, ‘you like having us around.’

Boyd’s smiling by the end of it. ‘Well, you’re both psychopaths.’

‘Thank you,’ Erica and Isaac say together.

Boyd grimaces, not unkindly, and starts up the car again. Music blasts through the speakers.

‘Born to Run,’ Boyd sighs, ‘why must Springsteen haunt me?’

\--

He spends most evenings with Derek now. He’s just old enough that child services believed him when he said he had some people to stay with until they could find a foster home willing to take him. It helps that he kept his job at the cemetery. Come two am it’s too lonely, not to mention creepy, to go back to his old home. Sleeping out in the weather grows from rebellious to mind numbingly boring really quickly. So, Derek’s abandoned train cart of misery it is.

Derek is long since asleep when he gets there. Isaac rolls out his sleeping bag as close to the door as he can reasonably manage. Derek’s lived alone and miserable long enough that he’s completely disassociated from his surroundings. Get knocked down enough and you cease to care about most things; where and how you live is unimportant next to gritting your teeth through the days. Scott and Stiles mock him for it. It bothers Derek more than it should. Isaac tries his best to not draw attention to the ragged edges of Derek’s life. He does sort of understand. Even so, some nights the smell of poverty and lack of care gets to him.

He dozes for a few hours, until the first dawn warmth unfrosts the night, until he’s shaken with the feeling that he has to get up right now. It’s harder to ignore those urges to go left or right now than it ever has been before. When he opens his eyes it’s to a small ball of light hanging a few millimetres from his nose. His body feels disconnected from his brain almost like he’s slipped half out of it.

He sneezes.

‘Gross,’ the ball of light says.     

Isaac rubs his nose, skin dragging across the ball of light, it feels like being poked by a thousand little fingers of lightning. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Finding you, duh.’ The ball bounces a little, ‘get up.’

Isaac stands quickly, forgetting that he’s in nothing but his pajama pants. The ball of light bounces a few more times and begins to lead him out of the train cart. It’s dawn outside, sun rising over the edges of the woods that surround Beacon Hills. It’s a lucky thing that the area around the abandoned depot is deeply depressing and not prone to drunk teenagers. The ball of light whizzes around his head a few times before racing forward.

‘Where are you-’ Isaac starts just as the ball of light explodes in a huge bloom of lightning and smoke. The smoke forms into an androgynous figure tapping a purple umbrella against the ground.

‘She’s not safe where she is, Isaac.’ The figure points it’s umbrella at him. ‘When you find her bones take them outside the city limits.’

The figure with the purple umbrella disappears.

The strange thing is Isaac knows exactly what it’s referring to. Sometimes Isaac has terrible dreams where the things from his mother’s stories tell him secrets. Sometimes Isaac knows things before they happen. This time he knows that whatever is growing those mounds in the woods wants his mother.

He’s only partially sure where his father went out and dumped his mothers actual body after the funeral. As far as Isaac knows she never even touched the simple pine coffin they scrambled to get for her. His father had issues with her insistence on being buried outside holy ground. He always maintained that gravediggers had nothing to fear from god come time to lie down. The way he saw it whatever was above owed them for moving what was below for the dead bodies they took. Would it have been better if she was buried there? She’d wanted her soul thrown into the water, her body burnt, the ashes mixed with earth and sea salt and cedar. They’d done none of it.

Derek barely nods at him as Isaac slinks off with the camaro keys, reclining on the slightly molded mattress he sleeps on. Derek is the sort of man to find guilt to keep him company and it seems today he’ll lie back and let it swamp him.

No one’s at his house; the police investigation is closed and the house is about to be resold. Isaac picks the back door lock as easily as he has every winter since they moved in. His father was a family man as well as a sadist. After her death, after what his father viewed as her ultimate betrayal, Isaac was sure he carted her off to a shallow grave way out of the way. Made sure he never had to gaze at her plot as they dug others. He thought maybe the keys were in the basement, some clue to lead the way. He really should have expected the dirt and moss smell he can cleanly separate from the ground in smell of pesticides and his own fear. Maybe it would be less of a shock if he'd come down here again after his fathers murder. Maybe he should just set the place on fire.

The refrigerator is still and cold. Dead but for the thin green roots growing up the wall toward a drip on the wall. Isaac cracks his knuckles and begins to drag the box away from the wall.

When he’s got it all the way on the other side of the room he leans down. The concrete underneath the fridge is lumpy and broken, it takes barely any effort to tug it up and reveal a plot of dirt, as neat as any other grave they’ve dug. He finds a finger first, and then her hand, reaching upwards, like she knew when he screamed and begged to get out and tried to offer comfort.  

He digs his mother’s bones from the clutch of the ground, stuffs them in a sack, and drives again to the edge of a lake he knows way out of town. He takes the bones out to the deepest part of the slow glistening water and does it bone by bone. Dropping his mothers last remaining relics into the water with the butchered words of her tongue interspersed with lines of prose. By the time he’s done his fingers are filthy with muck and dirt. He wasn’t very squeamish before but the whole ‘werewolf’ angle has made him practical above all else, he wipes it off on his jeans and pays it no more attention.

The light hits the water at an odd angle, flashing in stripes across the surface. For a moment the lake rises up and is lit from within.

\--

‘It’s just weird, ya know?’ One girl says to her friend. ‘All the animals dying.’

‘Yeah,’ the girl makes a long appreciative whistle, ‘look at Lahey.’

Her friend nods. ‘I’d do it.’

Isaac turns his head away. People are attracted to him now. Now that he can kill them. Now that he would. If it disgusted him less he’d probably be really into it. Maybe he still he is. After all it’s hard to move from caring absolutely to not caring at all.

‘With protection. He was always a freak now he’s just a hot freak.’ Both girls laugh. ‘Maybe get like, a guy in a hazmat suit to wash me down after.’

‘Yeah.’ One girl says before they change subjects. ‘Oh, what if _he’s_ hot?’

Isaac rolls his shoulders against the hurt. Scare or disgust are the only options, then. He moves a little further down wind to catch what Scott and Stiles are saying. Derek says to stay away, that he’ll do what’s necessary when the time comes. Isaac’s animal brain tells him that Derek is alpha and by divine means always correct. Isaac’s lizard brain spent so many hours in a box he started talking to the dark just for something to do. Some day’s everything in him wants to trust and on other’s it feels like his back is so rigid, so full of steel made from hurt, that he can’t even bend over to touch his toes let alone relax enough to let someone else guide him.  

Scott and Stiles are talking, not quietly, about what Stiles is getting for Lydia’s birthday. The party is the same day as the full moon. He’s not going. Neither is anyone else if the way the rumors in the hall sound are any indication. He keeps moving.

Isaac picks up his food from the canteen and walks out to where Erica and Boyd are making a nuisance of themselves on the lacrosse field. Boyd’s wearing a new shirt, too tight on his shoulders, and a scuffed up pair of boots that makes Isaac envious and warm low in his belly at the same time. Erica is wearing a series of leather and silks shirts, none of them equalling a shirt on their own, probably because of how they plump up her already spectacular chest, and a pair of jeans that may just be paint. Isaac doesn’t feel out done around them, he’s always been one for soft shirts and sweater weather, but he does feel a lot of something else.  

He throws the juice box he got Boyd at his head. He doesn’t look up from the spot he’s staring at to catch it. Erica laughs.

‘What do you guys think of Lydia Martin?’ Isaac says without preamble.

‘Bitch.’ Erica turns the page of her textbook, some heavy worded anthropology text. She’s convinced there’s a study of werewolves out there somewhere. ‘Even Stiles says she’s cold hearted and _he’s_ got a hard on for her.’

Boyd blinks slowly the way he always does when he’s considering things from as many angles as possible. He tugs a hand through Erica’s hair where it’s spread out on his lap. ‘Brittle. Smart. Could be great.’

‘You think she’s nice.’ Erica accuses.

‘No one ever rules anything because they’re nice.’ Boyd smirks. ‘Look at Derek.’

Erica’s lip curls. ‘Let’s not pretend Derek is perfect.’

‘Because he won’t sleep with you?’ Boyd says gently.

‘Because he tricked us.’ She says sharply, ‘it was different for you and you know that. He convinced you; he seduced us.’

‘She’s got a point.’ Isaac sits down in front of them. Boyd gives him an acknowledging head tilt.

‘True,’ Boyd sighs, ‘but what options have we got now?’

‘We could run.’ Erica says in a way that suggests this is a long standing argument, ‘we could do that.’

‘Could we? He’s our alpha. Remember that huge speech?’ Isaac does a mocking pastiche of Derek’s voice. ‘The pack is all we have. If it dies then we die.’

‘I’d go because you two did,’ Boyd looks away, hands picking absentmindedly at the grass. ‘I’d want it to be all of us.’

‘We all would.’ Erica waves a hand and levers her self up to point at Isaac. ‘Why are you asking about Lydia anyway?’ Erica wiggles her eyebrows. ‘Got a crush?’

Isaac shrugs and shakes his head. Erica wants him to be happy. She also wants to mock him. ‘Nah, it’s not that. I’ll be back for pizza tonight.’

'And training,' Boyd says. 'Hours of fun there.'

'And letting Derek smash my head into the floor.' Isaac grins, 'but seriously, pizza.'

Boyd and Erica wave him off.

He smiles to himself as he goes. That, he thinks, is the beginning of something he could love a lot.

\--

The hairs on his arms rise with the moon. His jaw aches.

Derek said to find an anchor.

Erica and Boyd are losing control behind him. He feels the pull of their madness tug at an old worn out part of him. Begging him to lose the control that’s kept him alive all these years. He leans back against the seat, relaxes and bunches his muscles. When he was younger he wanted to fly; surfing was as close as they could get. They went to the ocean. His mother thrilled by the smell of the ocean and the sound of birds. His brother; silent and smirking before he was just nowhere to be seen. It’s a sepia toned memory. If there was colour its long since given way to the fuzziness of unwanted memory. He forces himself to think of the way his mother and his brother looked as they left him with his fathers hands, still gentle and loving, as he tried to teach Isaac to balance. Learn your body. Know it’s limits. Isaac tenses his jaw and releases it. The muscles jump and flow the way he wants.

His father’s hand on his shoulder as he came out of the surf triumphant and drunk on the taste of sea salt and accomplishment. His father’s wide loving smile before any of it was guarded.     

He know’s his limits.

\--

The rapid property expansion in expectation of a huge influx of residents moving further inland following the building of a highway, followed quickly by the stock market crash, means Beacon Hills is a veritable melting pot of half built and three quarter finished properties. A lot of which have running water and sometimes heating. The local homeless population, a group of people Isaac has come to know intimately over the last little while, joke that if the woods weren’t so darn creepy it would be the perfect place to plan to take over the world.

Erica climbs in through the window in the abandoned housing that Isaac is bunking in tonight. To be more precise; she smashes the window in with a broken brick, heaves herself over the sill in four inch heels, and pulls down her indecently ruched up red and black skirt. She pulls Boyd in after her. Boyd looks a little bemused by the broken glass.

‘Hullo,’ Isaac says from where he’s dozing on the shitty mattress Dean -resident homeless man and Isaac’s best resource for ‘living rough’- managed to get for him. It smells like old sex and freshly turned leaves.  

‘We’re getting out. Pack your shit.’ Erica announces.

Isaac sits up. ‘How? We haven’t got any money or anywhere to go.’

Boyd clenches his fists. ‘He lied. Derek lied. He made it sound like the only option was to stay with him, that we’d die if we did anything else.’ Boyd sighs and stomps over to sit on the mattress. Boyd loathes being duped more than almost anything. ‘There’s a place called the South Port Dome. It’s like a shelter for the supernatural.’

‘What?’ Isaac says, ‘that can’t be true. Derek always said-’

‘That all we had was each other? Yeah, big shock coming from him.’ Erica says bitterly, ‘there’s a network of these places called Houses meant to be safe territory where no one will try to kill us, or hurt us, or- or-’

‘We’re going.’ Boyd says softly. ‘What other option do we have?’

Isaac shakes his head. ‘We can’t leave him.’

‘Yes we can.’ Erica picks up his duffel from where it’s laying against the wall.

‘No we can’t.’ Isaac says with as much force behind it as he can manage. Boyd twitches next to him.

Boyd puts a hand over Isaacs knee. ‘He’ll get us killed. He won’t mean to but he will.’  

Erica brings the duffle over with her and sits with them. ‘I am so scared of dying Isaac.’

Erica and Boyd know him well enough by now to let the silence grow between them. Isaac does better with space otherwise Erica and Boyd would have bunked him down between them ages ago. Distantly it occurs that these are the only two people he will ever trust like this and that if his parents had been different maybe he’d be the kind of man who could leave Beacon Hills behind and run. Isaac’s never been all that safe. Never been kept safe and never been someone who’s sought it out. Violence is a cycle that eats it’s own tail over and over. Those who grow up in it’s cradle never learn to leave it entirely. Derek has his loyalty now. In all the ways that count obligation is a tighter bond than love.

‘I can’t go.’ Isaac gives them the most honest smile he can. ‘I can’t go. I’ve never left just because it was dangerous. I’ve never left just because he could kill me.’

Erica pales and hunches in on herself. Boyd nods and grips his knee hard.

‘Stay the night,’ Isaac pats Erica’s back and settles down more comfortably, ‘and yeah, I know how fucking awful it smells.’

Erica laughs and turns to crawl into him. Boyd does the same.

When he wakes up the first light is beaming through the broken window. The smell of the both of them has overwhelmed the smell of sex and turning leaves. They’re both gone.


	2. get out while we're young

\--

act II - grave

\--

And then of course Peter Hale.

Matt falls. Gerard rises. Jackson lives. Allison tumbles a little bit but finds her feet again fast enough. Jackson is saved. Scott begins his regeneration. Isaac finds himself at a loss. He practices with Peter and Derek for the Alpha pack, tries to get used to his foster home, tries to reconcile who he is with who he’s been.  

Erica and Boyd gnaw at him. Isaac can number his life in years of abandonment but this is something so fundamental to who he is now that it leaves him edgy. Becoming a wolf helped with a lot of the old pains but it’s left him susceptible to new ones. It wouldn’t be easier to bear without Derek, it would be a thousand times more impossible, but sometimes he wishes the desolation in his soul was still split between the three of them and not just Isaac.

Isaac falls in behind Scott. Sort of. Thing is, Scott walks on water. He walks around giving away affection and hope like he’s a man with a church pulpit. Stiles, who is objectionably a terrible human being, looks at Scott like he brought the whole universe with him. Isaac has heard all the rumors and all the speculation; they’re laced too close together, how are they not holding hands in the hallway. It’s more than that, though. Isaac is in the grip of a million new things. New werewolf. New orphan. New loss. Half his time is spent remembering to ungrit his jaw. The other half is spent remembering to keep himself together. Scott and Stiles are bound by ribbons much tighter than anything he’s got. Looking at Scott like he could save you is the main occupation of Stiles friendship with Scott; it’s not a path Isaac is beating for himself. Combined with an emerging sexuality -even if it’s mutilated by his parents relationship and the blank spaces that are Erica and Boyd- and you have a recipe for awkwardness.

Basically, Stiles would not piss on him if he was on fire. Stiles might set him on fire.

Isaac persists, anyway. He does part time at the Vet because it pays and he feels like he’s drowning a little less every time Ollo the Unadoptable Havanese remembers to drool on his spare work shirt. Most days now Scott gets him lunch and they talk. If Scott was a little bit more aware of the effect he has on Isaac they probably wouldn’t talk at all.    

‘I miss her.’ Scott says simply. ‘I want to try again.’

Isaac picks at the greasy burger. ‘Does she want to?’

‘She’s in France,’ Scott shrugs. ‘I want to give her the option. I’d never trap her.’

‘Good,’ Isaac says with a little too much emphasis.

‘Good,’ Scott smiles. Stupid dimple. ‘Wanna come over later?’

That’s usual now. Scott wants to help him, protect him. Isaac trusts him. Everyone does. He’s been trying to work up the courage to say yes for two weeks now.

As usual at this exact moment Stiles shows up.

‘Yo,’ Stiles says as he walks in, ‘we on for tonight, Scott?’

Stiles doesn’t glare at him but he has a huge air of wanting to. Isaac grimaces. ‘I’ll beg off. I’ve got work later.’

‘Making holes for dead people.’ Stiles nods his head. ‘Wholesome.’

‘I’ll dig yours if you want,’ Isaac grins. ‘How about tonight?’

Stiles makes a face, ‘I’ll be busy with my best bud over here.’

‘Shame.’

Scott rolls his eyes. ‘Okay. Fine. You could have texted me, Stiles. You shouldn’t encourage him, Isaac. He really doesn’t need it.’

Isaac rolls his shoulders. ‘I’m gonna go make a call.’

He does go outside but he doesn’t call anyone. Who would he talk to? He opens snake and plays it until lunch break is over and Stiles car peels out of the parking lot. Scott doesn’t call him on it.

\--

Getting paid for digging graves having now buried his brother, his mother, and his father, is a lot like going to the worlds awkwardest most fucked up family reunion. The guys who do the maintenance on the heavy machinery came to birthday parties and the pastor of the church baptised him. All of them know he’s a homeless fuck up probably into some bad shit who spends his time hauling dirt for dead people at 4am; all of them slide him a five or a ten when he’s not looking instead of talking about it. They’ve taken on a new guy, Connor something, and Isaac spends a lot of time trying to ignore the smell of lust and something he can only call _hunting_ that rolls off the new guy in thick rolls. He’ll have to think of a subtle way to tell Stiles that there’s an entirely human serial killer budding among them.

‘Same night time tomorrow,’ Connor says like it’s still funny after six nights in a row.

Isaac gives him the head nod he’s been perfecting. ‘Whatever, man.’

Connor grins like a rabid dog. Isaac goes out of his way to pretend he doesn’t see the guy adjust his pants as he leaves. Gross. Sure, Isaac wants to kill people on and off all the time now but he doesn’t want to beat off to it. It’s hours before dawn and he’s feeling restless. Dean showed him how to break into the library a few days ago and he’s known how to avoid tripping alarms for years now. Might as well try and do some homework. Or use the computer to watch fucked up porn.

The library is, unsurprisingly, quiet.

He picks up the day’s newspaper and one of the anthropology texts Erica was perusing a few weeks back. He thinks about her on and off. Mostly when it’s dark. He opens both and alternates between the two.

The newspaper has some headline about death splashed across the top, making it a Friday in Beacon Hills, and underneath a short column with an appeal to the residents to keep their pets indoors. They’re turning up dead. He thinks about the survey again, the one about all the animals running away.

He doesn’t realise he’s not alone because one moment he is and the next a now familiar figure with a purple umbrella is standing next to him.‘What are you doing here?’

‘Bored.’  He taps the newspaper headline. ‘Things are dying.’

‘Things tend to. Why are you here?’

What, existentially?

‘We name ships after women,’ Isaac says casually. He gets a sharp look and a tiny quirk to the mouth for his question.

‘I haven’t decided. Perhaps I’ll never choose.’

‘Alright,’ Isaac shrugs, ‘doesn’t matter to me.’

‘I know,’ she says, he says, they say?

‘You said not to take the forest home.’

‘Things die, dear,’ and he’s going to go with she at least in his head, ‘they do not always stay that way.’

Isaac sighs and closes his book.

\--

Every summer the high school opens it’s swimming pool for public use. It’s a PR event, mostly, a way of reminding the town that the school is responsible for things other than delinquency and underage pregnancy. Isaac’s never gone before, summer is the worst time of year to hide. Everyone’s looking at him now. The general consensus is ‘attractive but unstable’ or that he’s in need of saving. The second one’s kind of funny. Imagine saving him.

Lydia Martin is surrounded by her posse on the far side of the pool from him. She’s drinking something that is clearly alcoholic and twittering about something Jackson said. Her high heels clack audibly on the ground as she stands. No swimming for Ms Martin. She use to draw his attention because she was beautiful, all he see’s now are her ever growing cracks. It makes him hungry in the worst kind of way.

Jackson saunters in. Despite seeing him all the time now that he’s in the pack, Isaac can’t bring himself to contemplate liking him. Jackson lived less than a hundred metres from him for years. That boy can hang. He walks straight over to his girlfriend and lifts her by the waist, dipping her as he puts her down. Cue claps and exclamations from the gallery. He says something to her that Isaac doesn’t bother to listen too, she replies, on and on it goes.

Until it doesn’t.

Jackson’s hand curves on her stomach and his muscles tremble the way Isaac’s do when he’s reaching for his claws. Isaac watches mesmerized as he slides his trembling hand over her back, across her ass, barely stopping himself from wolfing out and ripping into her. He says something deliberately cruel and scents the air for her reaction.

Lydia’s mask falls for a moment and Isaac see’s a slow setting wariness in her features. Jackson says something mocking and she tilts her head just so, says something not quite as sharp back. She spins on her heel and stalks off, her steps fall off beat, not quite as solidly as they should.

It clicks a moment later. A cascade of long forgotten things, pushed as far back as he could manage, the moments when things first began to change between his parents. His mother checking and double checking her words, assuming her tongue had failed her. Her walking away with deeper shoulders resetting the world so she was the one in the wrong. His father with his chin raised, soft spoken, always quick to insure she never looked too closely. The magic always falls apart when you do.

Always leave after the first hit otherwise you’ll start to forgive them. How do you tell when the violence doesn’t start right away? How do you tell when the table has been set for years and you’re only just seeing the entrees?

He and Jackson have always lived within spitting distance of each other. Perhaps that kind of evil grows in patches.

Jackson preens for a half hour more before he leaves. Isaac watches him the whole time, the way his muscles twitch a little, like he’s only barely stopping himself from losing control. Jackson has better control than this. Maybe this is just who he is.  

Jackson gets into his car, checks his hair, and then takes off without a care in the world. Something snaps fully in Isaac’s head. He follows Jackson’s car. Maybe it was meant to go like this. Dead parents, mysterious accidents, rising from the ashes stronger than before. Werewolf has got to count for something in the superhero stakes, right? Maybe he was meant to be a fucked up kind of Batman saving girls like Lydia Martin from having their heads beaten in by their abusive boyfriends. It wouldn’t be wrong to hurt Jackson a little, it’d be kind of good, wouldn’t it?

The daydream dies as Jackson turns on to a long dirt path and drives all the way up to the old Hale House. Stiles is sitting on the front step waving his lacrosse stick around like he knows what to do with it. Jackson leaps out of the car and stalks toward Stiles wolfing out as he goes. Stiles freaks out and points the lacrosse stick out him, spitting out some words in a language that Isaac can’t identify. The words cause Jackson to fall to the ground, cause his chest and back to open into old wounds. Jackson falls to the ground, spasms, dies.

And then he stands up again. Stiles apologises as he helps Jackson stand.

Jackson wobbles to his feet and begins to yell before...

It starts at his head, the skin blisters and peels away from his skull, his hair falls out in clumps, his finger nails grow long before growing brittle and snapping off when he reaches up to pull at the skin on his face. It stretches grotesquely and Isaac can feel bile climb up his throat as Jackson rips off his skin to expose the leathery scales of the kanima underneath. Stiles looks on, not saying a word. Jackson’s transformation stops half way so he’s still humanoid.

‘This is the fourth time this week,’ Stiles says, ‘how many more times do we have to go through this before you give up and accept my help?’

‘Fuck you.’ Jackson says with a mouth full of tongue. His saliva is thick and black.

‘Oh you wish, big boy.’ Stiles says snidely back, ‘can you change back?’

‘No.’

Stiles sighs and with a barely a thought brings the lacrosse stick up and smashes it against Jackson’s nose. Jackson’s nose cracks and bleeds, Stiles reaching forward and using the blood to smear some symbols on his face. Immediately, Jackson begins to revert to human. ‘Go home, Jackson. I’ll find a way to fix this.’

‘Why?’ Jackson snarls as his hair falls back into perfect GQ formation, ‘someone paying you?’

‘I want you to owe me.’ Stiles shrugs, ‘besides I don’t want whatever gross thing you’ve got to spread to the werewolves I do like.’  

Jackson spits on his feet, gets up, leaves.

Isaac sits in the quiet that follows Jackson’s departure and thinks. Something’s wrong with Jackson. He’s losing control. Stiles knows and hasn’t burst into the loft to tell them all. Stiles can control whatever is wrong with Jackson. Which begs the question why don’t they know what’s wrong with Jackson?

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Stiles says out loud. Isaac gives up hiding and walks to sit on the rotting steps of the house. He purposefully looks unruffled.  

‘Interesting show.’ Isaac says carefully.

‘You should keep what you saw to yourself.’ Stiles says. Sometimes Stiles likes to pretend he scares people.

‘What was your mother like?’

Stiles mouth flattens. ‘Keep it to yourself.’

‘Was she kind to you? Mine was.’

‘What are you trying to do here?’

Isaac takes a guess. ‘My mother talked to the water just like yours did.’

Stiles face forms cracks and echoes. His lips fall to a frown before lifting up and bellowing out with laughter. ‘My mother didn’t talk to the _water_.’ He wipes spittle off his mouth. ‘You wanna know?’ Stiles throws out an arm to the broken house. ‘Go on.’

Isaac takes the dare.

Stiles walks in behind him. Nothing about the house, beyond smelling of fire and burning meat, seems out of the ordinary. Without thinking he leans on the wall and feels it lean back against him. The walls of the house are warm to the touch. They feel like sunburnt skin. He puts both hands on the wall and feels the burnt wood push against his fingers. The house retracts with an audible pained exhale. He can feel the pain begging to rise through his fingertips.

‘What-’

‘It’s been happening for weeks. Ever since Gerard went psycho.’ Stiles puts his own hand against the wall, it blackens and crumbles under his fingers. A huge whistling noise blows through the house, rumbling up from underneath their feet.  

‘No,’ Stiles says, ‘there are _no noises_ coming from the basement. Is this a cheap Tuesday B movie?’

‘Your best friends a werewolf,’ Isaac says drily, ‘you are currently in a haunted house with another werewolf. In the haunted house that a family burnt to death in. You’re a b grade side character, Stilinski, deal with it.’

‘Oh my god, you’re funny,’ Stiles looks shocked, ‘who knew?’

Isaac rolls his eyes, ‘no one still around to tell the tale.’

‘Mysterious basement noises,’ Stiles bounces on the balls of his feet, ‘let’s go check it out.’

‘How about I go?’ Isaac suggests mostly for Stiles returning scowl. ‘I’m stronger.’

Stiles rolls his eyes. ‘Whatever dude, just go.’

Isaac walks down to the stairs that lead to the basement, carefully stepping over the three broken ones. The basement is filled with the same odor de joie as it always is, damp crawling  into the fire damaged walls into the warped metal that pushes out through the walling. Manacles on the wall. The stench of Derek’s pain and a woman’s sick arousal still strong. The floor underneath his feet starts to grow warm. As Isaac steps into the middle of the room there’s a huge rumbling noise. Mounds burst up from the ground, the same ones as the day in the forest, he can hear noises from inside them. Hands push out from the wall and Isaac knows it’s the dead pushing out to meet him. The house is pulling them out of the ground and back into the land of the living. The mounds and the walls burst into flames.Out of the mounds come faces Isaac has only seen in newspaper obituaries. Mr Hartigary, leukemia. Ms Donaldson, old age. Harrietta Moew, hit and run. There’s a lone one, a husk, and Isaac can just make out fingers reaching upwards.

A woman stands in the middle of the flames, palm down, silver hair flying around her head. Her throat is ripped out and huge chunks of her skin is blistered and black. ‘Hullo witchborn, hullo Lahey,’ she says ‘this house is burning.’

‘Yep.’ Isaac says for sheer lack of anything else. The woman’s eyes are a horrifying yellow; half wolf, half pus filled and sick. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘I’m so hungry, nothing left to nourish me. Where did they all go?’ She says forlornly. ‘It’s broken. I want them back, I will bring them back. All my people hurt and taken from me and those who aren’t mine back from the dead. I’m so hungry.’

‘Please don’t kill me?’ He tries. The woman pays him no attention.

‘I want to burn everything.’ She looks away from him, ashamed. ‘I want to consume everything.’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ She shrieks, ‘Why? They left me alone, no mothers blood, no wolfs blood, nothing but him and his nightmares. And now this desecration! How can I be so cold and still on fire?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Isaac says, meaning it. He has next to no idea whats happening just that its really important he be sorry right now.

‘Compassion.’ Purple lips twitch, sigh. ‘Don’t die. I have work for you.’

The woman disappears in a snap leaving behind the smell of fire just put out with rain.

Isaac blinks and rubs his eyes. ‘Shit.’

\--

Stiles is tapping his foot by the front door.

‘What is it?’ He asks. ‘What was down there.’

‘The woods.’ Isaac gives him the rundown of what happened. Pauses, then adds. ‘Witches, I think.’

Stiles swears and pulls out his phone. ‘Allison? Hey, could you look up some stuff for me? Witches in Beacon Hills over the last- What? I can’t- Allison it’s not like I’m trying-’

The phone makes a beeping noise. Stiles stares at it accusingly.

‘No help?’

‘No, a lot of help.’ Stiles sighs. ‘Everything in this goddamn town cycles back to him.’

Isaac sighs too. Derek makes the exact same face everytime they have to admit that their only connection to the information the Hale’s had before their demise is Peter Hale. The car ride to the apartment complex Peter lives in is quiet, only punctuated by Stiles muttering in some foreign language, Isaac takes the time to doze a little. When he opens his eyes again Stiles is tapping on the hood of the car. Isaac gets out and follows him upstairs. Stiles must have been here before, Isaac doesn’t have to direct him at all.

Peter opens the door with the same overdone sense of grandeur he does everything. ‘Boys.’

‘Asshole.’ Isaac and Stiles say at the same time.

‘Charming,’ Peter moves out of the doorway. His apartment is minimalistically decorated with high ceilings. There are bones in a bowl on a low black table. ‘Come in.’

Stiles doesn’t waste any time, ‘what do you know about the Hale house.’

‘Ah,’ Peter taps his chin, ‘that.’

‘That?’

‘That,’ Peter nods to himself, ‘Nature is magic. Magic is death. Death is life. Life is nature. I may have overestimated myself slightly with my resurrection.’

‘Really.’ Isaac says.

Peter gives him a dirty look. ‘I can’t tell you all of the particulars, no one can anymore. But some magic leaves...residue, behind. Some magic is only good for corruption. Something you know all about, Stiles.’

‘So your resurrection caused this?’ Stiles says.

‘No.’ Peter says with conviction. ‘Jackson’s did. He was meant to die and he didn’t. I had some extenuating circumstances in my favor.’

‘So?’

‘So the house, which is not currently a house, is...upset about our newest pack members current living status. Things die, they go right back into the bosom of nature, and then they never come back out again. Never come out the same again.’

Isaac taps his foot against the floor. ‘Whatever’s in the Hale house won’t go away until Jackson’s dead?’

‘It’s not just the Hale house,’ Stiles shoulders drop, ‘there’s been twice as many animal murders, domestic violence is triple the usual, there’s been more stabbings and thefts than is regular for this time of year.’

‘So it’s getting worse?’

‘Yeah, my dad’s hoping there isn’t a heat wave this summer; the departments expecting at least one serious killing.’

Isaac thinks of Connor and his sick smell, ‘yeah, I can see how that could add up.’

‘We have to kill him.’ Stiles shakes his head. ‘There’s gotta be another way.’

‘How did this happen?’ Isaac asks. ‘How do we fix it?’

Peter clucks his tongue. ‘Now Stiles is perfectly aware of that, aren’t you?’

Isaac looks at Stiles who is looking at the bones on the table, pale faced and stinking of distress.

‘There are a lot of ways to bring back the dead. I just chose the prettiest one.’ Peter smiles, his teeth are bright. ‘It requires a sacrifice, I used Lydia’s magical core.’

‘So Jackson-’

Peter shakes his head. ‘Jackson is much like Lydia. He was used, not using. Have you read Donovon’s New Unique?’

‘The one on border theory and magical transmutation in relation to organic fields.’ Stiles tilts his head. ‘You think Beacon Hill’s is an irregular field.’

‘Look at the magical topography and make your own conclusions.’ Peter points at the door. ‘Oh, one more thing.’ Peter says, ‘you may want to give some thought to what Jackson’s using to anchor himself. The magic might keep his body from rotting but his anchor will be what’s keeping his humanity together.’

Isaac lets Stiles lead as they go toward the elevator. He hits the stop button half way down.

‘What was that?’ He asks.

Stiles grunts. ‘Leave it.’

‘Nope.’

‘I...I’ve been getting lessons on magic from him,’ Stiles grits out from behind clenched teeth. ‘He’s the only one who knows.’

‘Okay. What does this have to do with Jackson?’

‘Nature is magic. Magic is death. Death is life. Life is nature. People don’t come back, except that here it happened twice. We don’t get to play god. It’s, like, the rule. Now the genius loci of the area is angry at us.’

Isaac grimaces. ‘I’m sorry the _land spirit_ is mad at us?’

‘That’s not what it is.’ Stiles says sharply. ‘It’s the amalgamation of energy created into a consciousness that governs the magical currents of the area.’

‘Right. Because that’s better.’

‘If Beacon Hills is an irregular field than that means you can do things here that you shouldn’t be able to. If we were anywhere else Peter wouldn’t have come back and being the kanima would have killed Jackson. Beacon Hills is destabilising, the barrier between alive and dead is growing thinner and thinner and until we restore it the violence is just going to get worse. They’re both dead, we just need to kill Jackson again.’ Stiles laughs bitterly. ‘He’s already dead, Isaac. He’s a fucking zombie that hasn’t figured out it wants brains yet.’

‘If you knew this already-’

Stiles snarls. ‘Yeah, well, I’m not quite ready to be a murderer yet.’

Isaac stays silent for near to a minute before blurting out. ‘He’s going to hurt Lydia. You know that, right? That’s how this goes. Even if she’s the only thing keeping him human.’

‘I think we’re too late to save her.’ Stiles says seriously, ‘we’ve been too late for a while now.’

Isaac leans his head against the wall of the elevator. ‘And how far gone are we?’

Stiles presses the button and the elevator continues downward. ‘Not as far as we will be.’

\--   

Isaac thinks about it all the way to where Dean said that he’d shacked up for the night. He thinks about being unsaveable. His anchor is his father because even when he feels like he’s nothing but a bunch of bad moments trapped between empty hope he can see where the days were still good. He’s absurdly glad that his anchor is dead and gone. That the only thing left to taint it is his own perception.

The good days are behind them all, now.

\--

It’s just Stiles and Jackson in Derek’s loft apartment when Isaac gets there a few hours later.

Stiles acknowledges him when he enters with a nod. Jackson continues to fiddle with his phone. Stiles turns to Jackson. ‘You’re dead.’

Jackson snorts. ‘So, what, now I’m a fucking zombie? What’s next abominable snowman?’

‘Sorta. Beacon Hills has its own magical field completely different from anywhere else, the uniqueness of that means that things are possible here that aren’t possible anywhere else.’ Stiles smiles weakly. ‘Donovan covered it in ‘The New Unique’.’

‘I’m really glad for Donovan, then. How does this help me?’

‘It doesn’t.’ Isaac says. ‘You’re dead.’

‘I’m standing here talking to you losers. I’m not dead.’

‘Jackson-’

‘Your body isn’t, you are.’ Isaac tilts his head. ‘You can’t stay away from Lydia, right?’

‘She’s my girlfriend.’

‘She’s your anchor. Every time you see here it gets a little easier to control, doesn’t it? Sometimes you look at people and all you can think about is how their skin would feel ripped up in your hands, if they’d run from you, if they’d fall.’

Jackson pales. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I feel it too. All the wolves do. Humans used to follow their prey for hours walking and walking until whatever they were hunting just fell down and died, or they did, that’s what an anchor is for us. Something that means so much to you you’d follow it until you couldn’t anymore. It’s not as simple as this human is mine or these memories are important it’s the fact that the meaning you attach to them is so fundamental to who you are as a human that even when you’re insane with the need to consume and destroy you’ll turn away, just for them, just because they happen to be there. It also means you’d hunt them until they died.’ Isaac shrugs. ‘C’est la vie.’

‘I don’t feel that.’

‘Not the way I do. Whatever Lydia represents to you, it’s enough to keep you whole.’

‘So I stay with Lydia.’

Isaac shakes his head. ‘Oh, no, you stay the hell away from her.’

‘You gunna make me?’

‘Wrong, see, first you get up close. Then you say it softly, ‘you gonna make me?’ And then you give then the crazy eyes, so that they’re sure.’ Isaac gives him a thrilled little smile. ‘I’m scarier than you.’

Jackson turns rank with fear before settling again. Isaac bares his teeth one last time before getting out of his space.

‘Derek,’ Jackson smirks, ‘you hear this?’

Derek descends from whatever perch he was sitting on. Isaac is passingly ashamed for not spotting him. Derek pauses long enough to glower at the three of them. ‘Break it off with Lydia. Don’t tell her what’s going on. I’ve got a plan for getting you out of this and I don’t need her messing anything up.’

Jackson’s face is abruptly serious. ‘She’s not going to leave me now.’

‘Make her. You can do it.’

Jackson pauses before nodding. ‘Alright.’

Isaac grits his teeth. ‘Derek-’

Derek rolls his eyes. ‘She’s 16, Isaac, none of it matters anyway.’

Doesn’t it? That’s awful cavalier for a man whose family burnt to death around the same age. ‘She doesn’t deserve-’

‘Lydia’s got a heart of stone, Isaac. She’ll be fine.’

Isaac swallows his rage. Neither of them are going to hear a goddamn thing he has to say.

‘She doesn’t deserve this.’ Isaac says slowly. He still has to try.

‘What’s she gonna do about it? If we told her why she’d never do what she has to.’ Derek glares at him with red eyes. ‘I’m your alpha and I say this is how it goes.’

‘I’m meeting her in a half hour.’ Jackson puts his phone back in his pocket.

‘Besides, Isaac, the other option is her death.’ Derek smirks, ‘What you hadn’t put that together yet? Resurrection requires a sacrifice, his own life wasn’t enough but hers might be. Would you prefer that?’

The whole room is silent for five heartbeats, quadruple loud in the empty air of the loft. Derek’s right, she wouldn’t leave Jackson, wouldn’t stop loving him even if she knew that doing so would get her killed. That's never been how it works. Breaking the connection between them, hurting her, is the only way, even if it means she has to live with never knowing the truth.

Derek sighs. ‘Isaac, go with him. Make sure he does it.’

Jackson rolls his eyes but gestures for Isaac to follow him as he gets up.

‘You’ll regret this, Derek.’ Isaac looks him in the eyes. ‘You’ll regret it. Jackson may be the black hole where decency goes to die but she loves him and you’re going to let her think she killed him.’ _You’re going to make it her fault._

Derek’s eyes, red and angry, say that he already regrets too many things. Isaac lets the argument go, accepts that he’ll have to live with it too.  

\--

Watching Jackson work his way up to breaking his girlfriend is nauseating. Jackson tells her the Derek approved version of what’s happening over a shared ice cream cone in a shitty parking lot. Isaac is listening in. He’s charming, he’s smooth, he’s capable of looking at her like she means everything. Isaac isn’t sick through sheer force of will.

‘I can help you,’ Lydia throws her hair back confidently, ‘we’ve proven that.’

‘Have we,’ Jackson smirks, ‘I don’t think so.’

Lydia’s mouth tightens suspiciously. ‘What do you-’

‘Derek says that what happened to me was a fluke, but the way I see it the only thing different about me and the rest of them is an immune girlfriend. Maybe I had it right the first time. Maybe you’re not enough.’ Jackson makes sure to lower his voice on the end of it, make it sounds like a secret.

‘Don’t.’ Lydia says sharply.

‘Don’t what, Lydia? Tell you the truth? Maybe it _is_ you.’ Jackson smiles. ‘Come on, you’ve got to think it too. You do, don’t you? I would.’

‘I-’

Jackson catches his eye and nods. ‘Catch you later.’

He walks away missing Lydia’s wide eyes. Maybe he just doesn’t care.

Jackson’s face betrays nothing. ‘I told you it would be easy.’

‘Yeah,’ Isaac agrees, cold settling in his stomach, ‘it’s always easy.’

It is the ease with which he did it, Isaac thinks, that he crushed her down in less than five sentences, not even a hundred words. It takes skill, knowledge, and a foundation of cracks to tumble someone like that. Jackson does look back for a moment and a world of regret passes over his face before he rights himself by saying whatever it is men like that say to justify themselves and continues on like the moment had never happened.

‘You don’t love her,’ Isaac says slowly, ‘not in any way I’ve seen love work.’

‘I don’t.’ Jackson agrees with a nod, ‘and I do. Before this, before Scott McCall, I would have said I did. What do you think would happen if we were all like McCall? I think about that all the time.’

What would it be like to believe your heart was the greatest weapon? What if we didn’t turn into monsters so easily? ‘I do too.’

‘We’re not him.’ Jackson says with no jealousy or anger just a calm unshined acceptance. There’s a detachment in his eyes Isaac’s never seen before. The interior as detailed and devoid of depth as the outside. ‘Thank god for that. The world needs assholes.’

\--

Jackson fades rapidly over the next few weeks. Lydia avoids him, changes her number, wears herself thin with worry as her pride refuses to let her talk. Jackson begins to lose control of himself and slowly his humanity leaks out of him. It’s close to the most grotesque thing Isaac has ever seen. Jackson gives up on his peacock strutting a week and a half in. He no longer cares what he looks like. When none of them are being careful enough they meet his eyes.

Once, when he was much younger, his father re-dug a grave after a huge flood of rain pushed the dirt around. The bloated body of the man in the coffin pushed out through the wood, his dead, glossy head turning one eye to rest on Isaac. The eye was pale and sad and tired.

‘Now that,’ Paul, the guy digging with them, says, ‘is how you tell a dead man from a live one.’

\--

On the days he’s trying to be a good person, on the days he believes that he is better than the worst thing his father did to him, Isaac pretends the world is not a split white and black division between those who are eaten and those who eat. In a few hours he’s going to take Jackson outside the Beacon Hills limits and watch his body disappear. He’ll do it because it should be done and because if he doesn’t the violence will just keep growing. That doesn’t make him feel any better about it.  

Stiles is driving, his old jeep bumping against every pothole and lump on the road. He has bags under his eyes, worn in ones, his fingers are restlessly jumping across the wheel. ‘Don’t tell Scott we did this.’

‘I was never going to.’

‘He likes you, ya know. I don’t.’

‘I didn’t expect you to.’

‘I’m- I’m sorry we can’t save her. That you won’t get to see her again.’

For a moment Isaac assumes he means Lydia, whom he can see any time he likes if he’s willing to bend a few laws. Then he realises that Stiles, who lost his mother, who mourns her in a way Isaac’s father rendered useless, is weighing the cost of violence against the hope of seeing his mother again. The thought never even occurred to Isaac.  

‘I took her bones outside the city limits weeks ago.’

‘How did you know to do that?’ Stiles asks.

‘How do you know what symbols to draw?’

Stiles makes a choking little laugh. ‘Yeah, how do I know that? I know I _can’t_ I just want to so badly I’m almost willing to pay the price.'

‘Almost.’

Stiles nods. ‘Almost.’

Stiles drives them deep into the forest along an old back road to one of the small clearings that abound. Jackson, Derek, and Peter are already present. Stiles gets out first heaving a heavy briefcase after him. He opens the case and pulls out a gun. Stiles grins at him. ‘Illegal weapon. Not quite as cool as the video games make it.’

Isaac raises an eyebrow but makes no comment.  

Jackson is sitting on a log by himself, arms bared to the wind, dry skin flaking off his face and hands to reveal patches of scales. He’s looking at the ground. Derek and Peter are a way away from him, talking. Peter keeps shaking his head. Derek has that look again, the one he wore all the way through the Beacon Hills back roads when Erica and Boyd ran.  In a sharp intake Isaac realises what everyone else has not.

Derek’s face is pinched and bitter. ‘I can’t save you.’

Jackson snaps to attention. ‘I don’t want to die!’

‘Jackso-’

‘I don’t want to die! _You said I wouldn’t die!_ ’ He roars, eyes filling with pain and rage. Stiles swears under his breath and crouches down low to the ground. His nails bite into his cuticles until blood wells. He wipes it over the barrel of the gun.

‘I didn’t think you’d fade so fast.’ Derek licks his lips, ‘I thought I’d have more time.’

‘No, no, no, no, no.’ Jackson moans. ‘Bring Lydia back.’

‘It’s too late-’

‘No it’s not!’

‘You’ll kill her.’ Isaac says sharply.

Jackson looks at the ground and then crawls on his hands and knees to Stiles. Jackson puts his head to the barrel of the gun. ‘I won’t kill her. I won’t kill anymore. I can't- I see people and I just want to hurt them. I wanna do _fucked up_ -’ Jackson groans and pushes against the gun harder.

‘What are you- I can’t shoot you Jackson.’ Stiles jerks back but Jackson holds on. Stiles, in a twitchy hand movement, pulls the trigger. ‘No! _No!_ I can’t be the one to kil-’

It shouldn’t be as simple as it is to do. One moment Jackson is 16 years old and full of himself and the next he’s lying on the cold hard ground, one neat bullet through his head.

Stiles hands shake as he lowers the gun, ‘That- I didn’t-’

‘You did what you had to.’ Derek slaps a hand down on his shoulder.

Isaac looks at the blood pooling on the ground and tries to connect it with the body. No heartbeat. ‘Dead.’

‘Well, we should get going then.’ Peter says casually as he stretches, just in case anyone had forgotten to be disturbed by him.

Something prickles against Isaac’s skin. ‘We should bury him.’

‘You’re the gravedigger.’ Peter turns to face the others, ‘Stiles, Derek, join me for a nightcap?’

‘No, on account of how much I hate you.’ Stiles says flatly. His eyes don’t move from the corpse. His face, usually covered in moles and spots, is clear of blemishes. Stiles holds up the gun. ‘We’ll have to dispose of this.’

‘We could put the body in-’ Peter stops, sniffs the air, ‘do you smell that?’

‘Finally, after all that fuss.’ A voice says from behind them. They all turn to look. A woman with silver blonde hair and no particularly distinguishable features beyond that is staring at them. She waves a long purple sword at them.

‘Who are you?’ Stiles asks.

‘Who am I?’ She says with disgust. ‘You were born here, you’re mine.’

‘Okay.’ Stiles rolls his eyes. ‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

‘Why should it? Why should I?’ She waves a hand, ‘humans.’

‘We really should bury him,’ Isaac mutters.

‘Yes, you should. Back to nature.’ She leaps over to Jackson’s body and nudges it with her foot. ‘Small thing, isn’t he?’

Isaac is overwhelmed with the urge to touch her, so he does. Her skin pushes back at his fingers like the Hale house did. ‘Will you stop driving people insane?’ 

‘No. Not for a long while yet.’ She squints, ‘was that your first kill, Stiles?’

‘Yeah.’ Stiles says like he’s been gutted. ‘Only kill.’

‘Hmm,’ something that may meant to be fingers forms out of the indistinguishable space that is her body touches Jackson’s blood. She frowns. ‘Isaac will dig his grave. I like him far more than I like any of you.’ She looks at Peter as she says it.

‘It’s the hair isn’t it? That bothers you?’ She croons. ‘Poor dead thing. We’ll get you back, too.’

Peter’s face loses all it’s charm, he spits, ‘not fucking likely’ and runs out of the clearing. The snapping, snarling thing in Isaac’s chest scents prey and begs him to give chase.

Derek sighs. ‘He’ll be unbearable for at least a week.’

She bounces on her feet. ‘Then bear him back to me.’

Derek meets her eyes and lets his go red. The woman turns a bright yellow stare back.

Derek snarls, ‘fine. I don’t know who you are but-’

‘You were all mine first,’ she says quietly, ‘and I am not the one who ran away.’

Stiles grabs Derek’s hand. ‘I think it’s time to go.’

‘Stil-’

‘No.’ Stiles snaps back. ‘You promised Derek.’

Derek looks from Stiles hands still slick with blood, to Isaac, to Jackson and finally to the woman. All the fight goes out of him. He stops just long enough to close Jackson’s eyes, then follows Stiles away. Isaac doesn’t move, not even when his only chance of getting a lift back drives away.

‘Why?’

‘Deals made years ago by people who knew they’d never have to pay for them. I’m sorry, child.’ She takes his arm and leans on his shoulder. She’s just the right height to. ‘I think I’ll pick you next.’

‘Pick me?’

‘You’re a good balance, Isaac.’ Her mouth twists sardonically. ‘You know your limits.’

Then there’s lips on his and black lights going off behind his eyes. In a moment he knows that the town’s been reaching for him for years. That his mothers trips to the ocean where her way of keeping her baby for a little while longer. That his mother is gone and dead. That his father and brother are too, he knows that Beacon Hills is haunted and that none of them are getting out.

Isaac sits at the borders of town and waits it out. He should panic. He should run. There’s nowhere to go, though. The town tells him there’s work to be done before morning and burying Jackson is the least of it. It’ll be a hard few years, lots more dead before they put their feet up -and their feet _will_ be up, the end of this _will_ come. Years and years to go before they sleep.

\--

Isaac only see's Lydia one more time that summer. 

Jackson's body is dug up by feral dogs a few weeks before the end of summer. Identified by his teeth because the rest is unrecognisable. The town takes down it's missing posters, stops trampling the woods day and night looking for him, and sets about remebering him not as he was. The Whittmores shut themselves in their house to grieve and everyone gives them at least a week before condolences start. The day before their last year in Beacon Hills begins Lydia sets fire to all his belongings. Isaac doesn't have to listen to the still new feeling in his body that comes from the town to know she hasn't slept since they found him. Her shaking hands, chipped polish, and mismatched eyeliner tell him that just fine. 

Danny has his arm slung around her shoulders, kept away from the intricacy of her hair-do. Allison is standing a way away, her arm resting lightly against Scott's back. Stiles is helping Derek preform the last of the rites of the dead. No one talks. No one says anything about Lydia's pale face staring accusingly into the fire. In a few hours most of them will go to the schools fucked up memorial service. Isaac will go home. 

One of the half built complexes on the outreaches of town has finally given up and been set for demolition. It’ll take a few days for everything to go through and the fences have yet to go up around it. In one of the rooms on the higher floors, plumbing finished but with windows and parts of the wall missing, Isaac bunks down for the night. With moonlight and a view of the woods, he opens an old water stained volume to the last part of the last poem his mother ever read to him.

_An open grave on the face of the earth_

_On your face on my face._


End file.
